It often necessary for dentists in evaluating teeth of patients to prepare molds of upper and lower teeth and send them to dental laboratories that will prepare dental casts of these upper and lower molds and assemble them together to display the resultant combination of temporarily joined casts. Typically the molds are joined together in a device known as an articulator.
An articulator employs a vertical support of some type with upper and lower spaced horizontal metallic plates movable toward and away from each other, with the cast of the lower teeth being secured to the lower surface of the lower plate and the cast of the upper teeth being secured to the upper surface of the upper plate.
In order to insure that the casts are properly secured to the plates, plaster is used normally and subsequent removal is very difficult. Once casts are employed in this manner, they cannot be remounted in an articulator without breaking off the plaster.
The present invention overcomes this problem by eliminating this use of plaster and instead using a novel articulator system that enable casts to be repeatedly remounted in articulators at any time.